摘要

Due to the concerns on laboratory environmental safety and human health, aqueous solutions of room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) were used as environmentally friendly chromatographic mobile phases instead of the conventional volatile organic solvents. The method was applied to the analysis of nicotine and its metabolite, cotinine, in serum, as an example. The separation problems of these alkaloids were solved successfully by RTILs via the suppression of the adsorption between analytes and silanol groups. In comparison with other existing chromatographic methods, the proposed method is environmentally friendly and can obtain better peak symmetry and higher separation efficiency.